There is a common idea among major artists that they are part of a continuum of artists with whom they feel at one. So much so, that they can easily take on each other’s identity in a painting: Manet as Rubens, Matisse as Rembrandt etc. Art historians hardly ever recognize these switches and...

Two recent entries, Manet's Croquet at Boulogne on the website and his Copy of Tintoretto's Self-Portrait posted on this blog, have both discussed the feeling, quite common among great artists, that they are reincarnations of one another. I see it all the time in the paintings themselves (eg....